Content warning: some blood, mild body horror
Novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is excited to start a new era. He has finally killed off his previous bestselling character, Misery Chastain, and is starting a brand new series. He is on his way to deliver his manuscript to his editor (Lauren Bacall) when his car goes off the road during a blizzard. Fortunately, Paul is rescued by a nurse, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who just so happens to be a fan. His number one fan, you could say. As Paul begins to recover, Annie gets more demanding, more controlling. The only way to pacify her is to write a new Misery Chastain novel.
There's something being said in the film about the parasocial demands of fandom that feels very prescient, given the well-publicized outcries about popular media, like the series finale of Stranger Things or the recent-ish Disney Star Wars sequels. Apparently, the kid who plays Percy Jackson in the Disney+ show had to ask fans online to stop sending death-threats to his potential prom dates. So there's a lot of angry, entitled people out there who only want to consume very specific things and when they don't get them, they take it personally.
But also, there's something very ick about the villain in this movie being a woman who physically dominates a man. It's infuriating because the way Paul walks on eggshells around Annie is just daily life for a lot of women in abusive relationships. So is this an entry in Women's Horror, my pet category of Only Horror Because It's Happening to a Man? I'm going to say no. I think it's just garden-variety misogyny that the scariest thing a man can imagine is a woman having power over him and treating him the way he would treat her if their roles were reversed.
Obligatory feminist rant out of the way, this is a very well-done film. Caan and Bates are performing their asses off, and the banter between the sheriff (Richard Farnsworth) and his wife (Frances Sternhagen) feels very vintage William Goldman/Rob Reiner. Barry Sonnenfeld was the Director of Photography and I had forgotten how good he was at capturing movement without feeling like you were going to hurl. And no shaky-cam! All in all, you could do much worse if this is your favorite horror movie. It's a solid thriller that holds up even 35 years later. It's streaming on HBO Max but only until the end of the month.
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